The Imperator Sings
by speakingintothevoid
Summary: (Max/Furiosa) There were many beautiful things in his life now: heavy green plants and smooth falls of water, Capable's copper hair and the girls' interlacing fingers and silvery laughter. But nothing, to him, was as beautiful as that secret smile and that secret song.
1. Chapter 1

Every night, he slept by her bed. The first night he rapped on her door it was near midnight, about two weeks after he returned to the Citadel. He had stood there in the doorway and stared at her wordlessly for several minutes, gazing at her all over as if to assure himself that she was there, that she was safe and she gazed back, giving him time. When he finally spoke, it was soft and gruff, "May I stay here?" he asked. She nodded and he grunted, walked slowly towards the bed and then dropped to curl up on the bare floor. She huffed a startled laugh and then laid down to sleep. When he awoke that first morning, a cotton blanket had been laid softly over him while he slept. He folded it carefully and put it in a corner for the next night. He was always gone when she awoke, and as early as she left the room, he was already in the kitchens or the garage or gazing out a window into the desert.

Max never forgot the first time he heard her sing. He had been walking down the corridor to her room, a few days after that first night. It was very late, and he had waited until his body could wait no longer for sleep, loitering in the garage after every War Boy had gone to their cots. As he neared the room he heard it, like a faint humming in his ears, and his body seized with anxiety. The voices in his head had been still for several days and he at first thought they had returned. His feet quickened towards her door, suddenly anxious to be in the warm security of her room, when he realized the sound emanated from her door.

The Imperator was singing. Her voice was low and throaty, and she sang quietly, although there was no one else who slept on this hall. It almost sounded absent-minded at first, a casual emanation of beauty in that dry place. His feet slowed instantly and his lips fell open with a sort of earnest hunger for the sound. His eyes went wide and he stood still for several seconds before approaching the door like one treading on hallowed ground. The sound rippled in his ears like cool water, and it bathed him and bathed him; numbing the voices, the panic, the anxiety of his spinning head. As her voice dipped and rose, the sound cooled his muscles, relaxing them, as his memory spun out of his head into a gentler place. He stood at the door, but he had to get closer, closer yet, without disturbing her. He settled his ear up against the rough wood of the heavy door and his eyes roved eagerly as he drank in the sound. She continued to sing in a level voice, an old, lilting lullaby of green things and small children, of hope and light and comfort in the face of a new morning. As she sang, his body drooped lower and his breathing slowed more and more until suddenly his lungs demanded more air and he drew in his breath sharply. Immediately she stopped and he shut his eyes and when she spoke, her voice was like a smile, "Max," she commanded gently.

He waited for a second, and then nudged open the door.

She sat on the bed with her legs coiled under her. She wore rough linen shorts like the wives had worn and a light black top for sleeping in. The black made her eyes burn green in her tanned face, and the knowledge that such beautiful sounds had come from such a beautiful creature turned him still again in the doorway until she looked up from the medical book she had been looking over and raised her eyebrows at him.

"I'm sorry," he said heavily, "for listening."

She shut the book and laid it in the windowsill as he watched her movements cautiously. Then she folded herself in the linen sheets and curled up with her back to him, blowing out the lantern, "Good night, Max," was all she said, but her use of his name was an intimacy between them and his shoulders relaxed.

After that, hearing her sing became a priority of his life. She sang as she read, as she repaired her clothing, as she counted seeds for Dag. Sometimes she would sing as she lay flat beneath the cars, working in the garage late into the night. Always she was alone and always he would go in search of her and wait, slowing to listen behind a corner. She knew he was there, and he knew that she would only go on as long as he had her permission to hear. Eventually, she would stop and summon him, and there would be a small smile on her face as she turned her head away. There were many beautiful things in his life now: heavy green plants and smooth falls of water, Capable's copper hair and the girls' interlacing fingers and silvery laughter. But nothing, to him, was as beautiful as that secret smile and that secret song.

She awoke sharply one night in the darkness to the sound of his roar. The sound had bellowed out of him and launched him from sleep, but he could not be calm and he thrashed for a moment in the darkness, caught in the blanket and the burning memories. "Max," she said, twisting out of bed, and his body stilled, but his throat continued to sob heavily for air and his back arched in agony against the floor. Her fingers found the matchbook and lit the lamp and he jolted again at the sudden flame of light, jerking back against the wall behind him, and labored to gain control of his breathing. "Max," she said again and she was leaning off the bed, reaching for him fearlessly. She took his face in her hands and his eyes lunged desperately around the room, as he continued to sob low in his throat, "Hush, hush," she comforted him like a child and drew his head up to her chest. He kneeled in front of her, his hands kneading desperately in the bedsheets on either side of her and his breath shuddered in escalating gasps. "Hush, hush, hush," she said, combing his hair slowly with her fingers and breathing the words into his ear, "Hush now Max you're awake Max," she chanted very softly, and slid off the bed towards him, pulling his head down onto her legs and reaching with one hand for his clenching fingers.

Slowly, so slowly, his breathing slowed and his body curled up against her like a puppy seeking warmth. His face twisted into her knees and he began to weep. She continued to stroke his hair and his face with slow, gentle hands, and carefully ran her fingers across his arms, neck and shoulders, pressing his body to hers, offering comfort in her presence, her closeness and always whispering that he was awake, he was awake, and he was with her, but tears rolled down her own face to accompany his own. Finally he lay still, his eyes unfocused and staring at the wall across from her, his head lolling in her lap as the air shuddered through his lungs. She sat still for a moment as well and they breathed together in and out, in and out: alive, alive, alive. She ran the fingers of one hand through his hair, over and over and the other hand she laid on his neck and she began to sing. His eyes widened and rolled up to hers in surprise, but her eyes were half-lidded, looking at his neck as she stroked it gently and she sang a new song, one he had not yet heard, a love song of the early days of the Water Wars:

" _When the sky grows cold,_

 _When the darkness comes rushing down,_

 _When your hands grow old,_

 _Wrap your heart in mine,_

 _Beautiful one, Beautiful one,_

 _Wrap your heart in mine_."

His lips fell open and his eyes trained on her face, his muscles slightly tightening again.

" _When the green has fled,_

 _When the wind has swallowed the water,_

 _When the land is dead,_

 _Hide your eyes in mine,_

 _Beautiful one, Beautiful one_ ,

 _Hide your eyes in mine."_

"Furiosa," he murmured, trying to catch her gaze. She looked up at him then, meeting his eyes, but continued singing, and threading her fingers through his hair.

" _When you can't be strong,_

 _When the pain has taken over,_

 _When you can't hold on,_

 _Hide your hand in mine,_

 _Beautiful one, Beautiful one,_

 _Hide your hand in mine."_

He lay as though frozen, hardly breathing, and she picked up one of his rough sunburned hands and lifted it to her lips, holding it there like a kiss, breathing on his fingers.

He gazed up at her with wide blue eyes, his tear-swollen lips half parted and she slowly lifted her eyes to meet his again, interlacing their fingers and laying his hand against her neck.

" _Beautiful one, Beautiful one." s_ he sang again, and dropped her lips to his.


	2. Chapter 2

The first night Max slept on her floor was the first night Furiosa had been without the nightmare. She had been waiting for it when he arrived, putting off sleep as long as possible. The dream was always the same. Angharad. Her lovely face and fierce smile. Her white fingers ripped off the War Rig. The crashing roar of sound, and her scream piercing through it all. Immortan Joe roaring in fury as the wheels struck the woman's pale, swollen body and two lives were extinguished at once. Sometimes Angharad remained awake and alive, screaming in agony in the desert as the vehicles rolled on, unheeding. Each night, the dream lasted every hour of Furiosa's unconsciousness, pinning her to itself until it pitched her mind back into her body rolling in sweaty agony on her bed.

But Max's first night was different. As he lay down on the floor she felt a murmur of surprise that he had not simply joined her on the cot. She lay in the dark, staring at the wall for several minutes before her body relaxed slightly between the sheets. She had covered him with a blanket, as though this small effort could shield his mind as well as his body, and she was thinking of him when she fell asleep. Concern for his own nightmares choked her mind, worry over which manic image had driven him to seek out companionship in the middle of the night. She thought of how he looked when he awoke in the War Rig, jerked awake and reduced to a child-like, unheeding stare as his consciousness realigned with reality. Her mind was filled with him, rather than awareness of her own impending visions, and her fingers uncurled softly towards him as she fell asleep.

Then she was awake. Gently wakened by an already heated wind pouring in through her small slit of a window. She breathed deeply and laid her hands on her stomach, marveling at how thick and soft her muscles felt after a night of uninterrupted sleep, how cool and dry her own skin was in the peace of a quiet morning. She turned to find the blanket folded carefully in the corner and the man was gone.

The nightmares returned the next night. But she had tasted the relief and now they were shorter and weaker. She had other things to think of before she slept and occasionally now, another morning would come when she could open her eyes to the coolness of a morning free of dreams.

Furiosa sang. It was her deepest connection to the Green Place. She kept alive the memories through songs: two soft lullabies and a love song that still looped through her mind, almost complete. She had repaired them through the years until she could hardly remember the broken parts, fitting words and notes into the empty places. During her years in the Citadel, she sang in her room, hummed in the hallways and murmured broken bars as she drove the Fury Road: anywhere she was alone. But her favorite place to sing was in the garage, during the few hours each night in which it was devoid of War Boys. Her voice was low but strong and it filled the huge area with _her_ vibrations, with the notes of her family, her mother, her land. Her music swelled inside and made her bigger and grander, filling the rooms with herself and her rebellion.

When she returned to the Citadel she did not sing for several weeks. She still ached deeply inside at the death of her homeland. But gradually, the habit returned. Now it was not a sign of rebellion, but just a piece of self that had been woven into her identity as surely as she had woven the missing words into the tapestry of lyrics.

One night, Max did not come to her room. She waited, without realizing she was, until later than was usual for her to sleep. She began to hum as she sat on the bed, looking over a medical book found among Immortan's supplies. Distracted, she began to sing softly to herself and she heard Max's last footfall as he came to a halt at her door. Her lips trembled as she hesitated. It was too late, he had already heard. He was silent outside the door and she took a breath and continued her song. The trust that allows a warrior to sleep in the presence of another warrior is not lightly to be laid aside. She trusted him fully, even with her song.

It was weeks later when his roar woke her. She scrambled to light the lamp, moving towards him instantly, reaching, comforting. His jolting body would have been frightening had it not been so frightened. Her hand reached to curl around his face and he stilled slightly at her touch, leaning into her as if for comfort, for the control he could not find in himself. She realized that she was murmuring constant, broken words and phrases of comfort, but once again she seemed to leave herself. She was looking searchingly into his eyes, seeking for them both that calmness, that unshakeable certainty and fathomless faith that they found in each other, at the meeting of their eyes and the understanding that structured them like iron. As she fumbled for his eyes, all of the other barriers around them that formed naturally between two broken warriors came shattering down. They folded, crashed into each other, as he curled in her lap and her tears joined his on his face. She realized only then the vast echoing danger of such a connection, of allowing this understanding to grow as it had every moment since their eyes first met in savagery and hunger, the danger of allowing yourself to grow into another, to find your strength to be strongest in its meeting with another's. And yet there was a power in it too, she realized, not putting it into words as her hand combed through his hair, so soft and full in her fingers, gentling her. There was a power in this and a strength that met the danger head-on. This was a kind of completion and she breathed it in and succumbed.

In the calm which followed, filling the little room like incense, they breathed together. All tensions and the indefinable nature of Them had broken under the weight of his body on hers and their tears falling together. Peace. And a growing, dawning sense of protection, Furiosa the protector, Furiosa the savior, Furiosa the brave and adored. She would fight for him and beside him and that was what she knew. So she sang to him, the best way she knew to express the victory of her mind. They had fought the waking world of demons and had stood victorious. Now, together, they knew they could face the night.

As he said her name she looked at him and, not for the first time, she reveled in his beauty. Beauty was scarce in her life, and she had learned to drink it in when she could. The girls were beautiful, and the planets, but Max had a fragile beauty that aligned naturally with her perspective of him. She looked down at him, simply appreciating his full lips and even skin, and the eyes that balanced her. Everything was highlighted by his tears: his eyes glittered with the precious water and his lips and cheeks were stained red.

 _Beautiful one, beautiful one._

It was fitting. The words were natural, and so was the urge that brought her lips to his, with no battle plan, no exit strategy. Only peace and trust.


End file.
